If Gunnar was eventually slain, for if the
advice which he gave had been followed, the champion would have
died an old man; and if his own sons had followed his advice, and
not been over fond of taking vengeance on people who had wronged
them, they would have escaped a horrible death, in which he himself
was involved, as he had always foreseen he should be.
"Dost thou know by what death thou thyself wilt die?" said Gunnar
to Nial, after the latter had been warning him that if he followed
a certain course he would die by a violent death.
"I do," said Nial.
"What is it?" said Gunnar.
"What people would think the least probable," replied Nial.
He meant that he should die by fire. The kind generous Nial, who
tried to get everybody out of difficulty, perished by fire. His
sons by their violent conduct had incensed numerous people against
them. The house in which they lived with their father was beset at
night by an armed party, who, unable to break into it owing to the
desperate resistance which they met with from the sons of Nial,
Skarphethin, Helgi, and Grimmr and a comrade of theirs called Kari,
(4) set it in a blaze, in which perished Nial, the lawyer and man
of the second sight, his wife Bergthora, and two of their sons, the
third, Helgi, having been previously slain, and Kari, who was
destined to be the avenger of the ill-fated family, having made his
escape, after performing deeds of heroism which for centuries after
were the themes of song and tale in the ice-bound isle.
CHAPTER XXIX
Snowdon - Caernarvon - Maxen Wledig - Moel y Cynghorion - The
Wyddfa - Snow of Snowdon - Rare Plant.
ON the third morning after our arrival at Bangor we set out for
Snowdon.
Snowdon or Eryri is no single hill, but a mountainous region, the
loftiest part of which, called Y Wyddfa, nearly four thousand feet
above the level of the sea, is generally considered to be the
highest point of Southern Britain. The name Snowdon was bestowed
upon this region by the early English on account of its snowy
appearance in winter; Eryri by the Britons, because in the old time
it abounded with eagles, Eryri (5) in the ancient British language
signifying an eyrie or breeding-place of eagles.
Snowdon is interesting on various accounts. It is interesting for
its picturesque beauty. Perhaps in the whole world there is no
region more picturesquely beautiful than Snowdon, a region of
mountains, lakes, cataracts, and, groves in which nature shows
herself in her most grand and beautiful forms.
It is interesting from its connection with history: it was to
Snowdon that Vortigern retired from the fury of his own subjects,
caused by the favour which he showed to the detested Saxons. It
was there that he called to his counsels Merlin, said to be
begotten on a hag by an incubus, but who was in reality the son of
a Roman consul by a British woman. It was in Snowdon that he built
the castle, which he fondly deemed would prove impregnable, but
which his enemies destroyed by flinging wild-fire over its walls;
and it was in a wind-beaten valley of Snowdon, near the sea, that
his dead body decked in green armour had a mound of earth and
stones raised over it. It was on the heights of Snowdon that the
brave but unfortunate Llywelin ap Griffith made his last stand for
Cambrian independence; and it was to Snowdon that that very
remarkable man, Owen Glendower, retired with his irregular bands
before Harry the Fourth and his numerous and disciplined armies,
soon however, to emerge from its defiles and follow the foe,
retreating less from the Welsh arrows from the crags, than from the
cold, rain and starvation of the Welsh hills.
But it is from its connection with romance that Snowdon derives its
chief interest. Who when he thinks of Snowdon does not associate
it with the heroes of romance, Arthur and his knights? whose
fictitious adventures, the splendid dreams of Welsh and Breton
minstrels, many of the scenes of which are the valleys and passes
of Snowdon, are the origin of romance, before which what is classic
has for more than half a century been waning, and is perhaps
eventually destined to disappear. Yes, to romance Snowdon is
indebted for its interest and consequently for its celebrity; but
for romance Snowdon would assuredly not be what it at present is,
one of the very celebrated hills of the world, and to the poets of
modern Europe almost what Parnassus was to those of old.
To the Welsh, besides being the hill of the Awen or Muse, it has
always been the hill of hills, the loftiest of all mountains, the
one whose snow is the coldest, to climb to whose peak is the most
difficult of all feats; and the one whose fall will be the most
astounding catastrophe of the last day.
To view this mountain I and my little family set off in a caleche
on the third morning after our arrival at Bangor.
Our first stage was to Caernarvon. As I subsequently made a
journey to Caernarvon on foot, I shall say nothing about the road
till I give an account of that expedition, save that it lies for
the most part in the neighbourhood of the sea. We reached
Caernarvon, which is distant ten miles from Bangor, about eleven
o'clock, and put up at an inn to refresh ourselves and the horses.
It is a beautiful little town situated on the southern side of the
Menai Strait at nearly its western extremity. It is called
Caernarvon, because it is opposite Mona or Anglesey:
